I'm adding a ceiling fan to a bedroom. The lightswitch in the room controls an outlet in the room. There is only one large white wire coming into the light switch box (with 1-white, 1-black, and 1-copper wire inside), so the power must pass through wall outlet first and then to light switch? Right? Also the copper (ground wire) is not connected to anything in lightswitch box. Can I run wire from new celing fan to lightswitch box and splice into this wire for seperate fan control? What about free ground wire?



Karl

 

What you have is a loop circuit for the switch. In a normal circuit the black and white going to a switch are hot (black) and neutral (white). When the circuit gets to the switch, the hot goes on either side of the switch and the neutral goes on through uninterrupted or it is cut and connected with wire nuts. In the circuit you are describing the romex cable is run from the power source to the load point (outlet), but in the middle of the run the black wire is cut and the branch to the switch is wired in. In that junction box you would probably see the wire end going to the power source connected to the black going to the switch, and the white wire coming back FROM the switch connected to the black wire going to the outlet. The problem with this is that at the switch all you have is a hot wire; there is no neutral even tho one of the wires is white (it's supposes to be painted black or had black tape wrapped on it to show this).

In order to use that switch what you would need to do is connect at the outlet where the black and white wires will in fact be "hot" and "neutral" as their colors indicate.